A Pilot’s Heroic Journey: Jonny Nicol, CEO of Stratajet (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: How many private jet operator companies are out there?

Jonny Nicol: In the US, there are 3,300 private jet companies, which have a thing called 135 accreditation. That’s a legal FAA requirement to be a charter company. We deal with only 500 of them because we want to make sure that we’re only dealing with the very best companies.

Sramana Mitra: Globally, how many companies are we talking? What is the total number of players?

Jonny Nicol: In Europe, there’re 1,300. We’re probably talking around 7,000.

Sramana Mitra: It’s a relatively fragmented market and you had to pull all this into your system to be able to operate with all of them.

Jonny Nicol: It’s hugely fragmented. In Europe, there’s an average of 2.1 aircraft per company. In the US, it’s an average of 2.8 aircraft per company. It’s massively fragmented.

Sramana Mitra: Which is why you have a business. Bringing this fragmented database together is not easy and that’s what you’re doing.

Jonny Nicol: Yes. Fragmentation is the friend of the entrepreneur; no question.

Sramana Mitra: You were describing a story of privately flying yourself to meetings. This is not an easy thing to do, right?

Jonny Nicol: No. Personally, it’s difficult. Putting it another way, it’s harder to build a business when you only have two to three big players. If you come up with a really good idea, they have the resources to do it themselves. Also, you had a lot of people who understood aviation but didn’t understand computer science. There are also a lot of people who understood computer science but don’t understand aviation. You have to have both to be able to build a company like Stratajet. I suspect, from what I’m seeing, that I’m the best person in the world to do that. There are other people who dabble with computers who are great with aviation.

Sramana Mitra: I agree with you. You have an unfair advantage on a couple of different metrics. You have an unfair advantage being a pilot. Interesting. Is there anything else in the strategic maneuvering that is worth discussing?

Jonny Nicol: I think resistance to change is an interesting strategy which I’m sure a lot of your entrepreneurial readers might resonate with. Resistance to change is the thing that stops you from being able to build something which is just incrementally better. You can’t just go and build something slightly better. The aviation industry, less than 1% are early adopters.

You can’t just be slightly better than that. What you have to do is build something that is incredible that will save them time and make them so much more money that it actually breaks their resistance to change. That was the secret. It wasn’t good enough to make their lives a bit easier. I had to build something that had a meaningful impact on their standard of life. Suddenly there are all these people who are using private jets who never used to. That is very exciting.

Sramana Mitra: How are you acquiring those customers? How are you acquiring the flyers?

Jonny Nicol: I’m very lucky because just after we made this technology work, we took it to the industry. A year later, we only had a handful of customers. We launched Stratajet officially in Europe in April 2016. That’s not even a year ago. Word had gotten around and an absolute genius marketer came to us and said, “Have you really done it? Is it real?”

He’d come from a company called NetJet, which is probably the best private jet operator in the world. He actually took a pay cut to work for us. Overnight, I had an entire marketing team. These guys were recognized as the best people to get new customers. I gave him less than $500,000. I said, “Here’s some cash.” Obviously, his face dropped but he did it. He produced the most amazing campaigns with virtually no money.

Sramana Mitra: What platforms were these campaigns on?

Jonny Nicol: We got some AdWords. We also engaged in remarketing. We also did print advertising. His argument which was actually right is, “We do aviation. By nature, that is actually something that people want to be safely involved in.” We have to be actually certain that operators are completely safe and are focused on customers and not just flying planes. I spent money on our logo in 2011. It was brilliant but it wasn’t a big brand statement. The first thing he did was rebrand.

We got the guys who did the Airbnb to do that. We spent a tiny amount of money and got us thousands of customers across the whole of Europe. Europe is one thing but I wanted the US market. It was aviation which means that it’s transatlantic. That’s why I went to the US to build the US supply. It’s worth sharing that we’re actually 12 months ahead of schedule for our consumer acquisition both in Europe and US. We launched in the US in November 2016. By the end of December, US sales had taken over European sales.

Sramana Mitra: That’s awesome. It’s a very well-positioned company. I think it will be very difficult to do what you’ve done. Every time there is fragmented data, it’s hard to do these businesses. Is anybody doing something similar?

Jonny Nicol: Many people are trying. We are the only ones who have even come close. We’re patented.

Sramana Mitra: Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 7 in the series : A Pilot’s Heroic Journey: Jonny Nicol, CEO of Stratajet
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